REVIEW

"All in the Timing" was heady, giddy, overeducated fun 20 years ago, when Primary Stages introduced a very clever, word-loving writer named David Ives. His six playlets, based on absurd twists in language and the fluke nature of time, went on to amuse actors and audiences around the country and, last season, Ives had his deliciously lascivious "Venus in Fur" on Broadway.

Primary Stages has revived these early pieces in a sharp, altogether entertaining staging by John Rando ("Urinetown," "A Christmas Story"). The five-member cast -- headed by the ever-morphing Carson Elrod -- breezes through all the thoughtful, existential adorableness, re-creating a universal gibberish language, imitating chimps trying to write "Hamlet" and proving, 20 years later, that timing is still everything.